Thorvalla - Cancelled

December 4th, 2012, 20:34

Especially since the Christmas shopping period is on now. Yeah, I think a lot more people have less to spend.

A good pitch would still make it though. I don't believe there's any absolute fatigue, too many millions beings raised and games with decent budgets still making it. But it might be the case that there is fatigue in the sense that you can't get people's money as easily, and need a better pitch than DFA, WL2 or P:E showed. And that's fine.

For me, it's more about time than money. With being able to get PC games so cheap digitally nowadays, I don't find myself needing to choose what to spend my money on. The problem is finding the time to actually play so many games.

Originally Posted by JDR13
For me, it's more about time than money. With being able to get PC games so cheap digitally nowadays, I don't find myself needing to choose what to spend my money on. The problem is finding the time to actually play so many games.

^This. Why do I need to sponsor new games when I have some outstanding RPGs I have yet to play? The pitch has to be real impressive and promise me something far better (or at least as good) as stuff in my backlog. For me it's purely the supply outstripping the (my) demand. But that's me, not the whole market, perhaps.. Perhaps, not, considering the recession.

There is a lot of bad supply-side thinking about that if you make something good enough people will buy it no matter the resources required. This is clearly wrong. If everyone is broke, your chances for funding are limited. Most people aren't going to go into further debt to fund a kickstarter (except perhaps us addicts). :/

In my opinion, part of the failure has to do with the rather generic feel of the game.
Dragons again ? Isn't this what mainstream games are about (Skyrim, Dragon Age, Divinity 2, etc.) ? A hint of "nordic" is not enough. And I go to Kickstarter to fund games that are different.
I was expecting a more original game from someone who worked on Realms of Arkania and Planescape.

I think it was poorly implemented really. I loved the realms games, but man I felt no excitement for this kickstarter at all. Some people put a project up there and think people will just throw money at it with little info. They were asking for a lot of money for a relatively unkown team(for recent stuff at least.)

As for kickstarter burnout? nah, I think it is more that it just wasn't a good pitch is all.

Originally Posted by Deekin Scalesinger
In my opinion, part of the failure has to do with the rather generic feel of the game.
Dragons again ? Isn't this what mainstream games are about (Skyrim, Dragon Age, Divinity 2, etc.) ? A hint of "nordic" is not enough. And I go to Kickstarter to fund games that are different.
I was expecting a more original game from someone who worked on Realms of Arkania and Planescape.

Well, before we move on to new gaming horizons I want to see the perfect generic RPG

I haven't pledged because the innovative elements didn't appeal to me. Trading Cards infused fights and classes that gave me an "Anime-Vibe" made me cautious. I might have bought the final version if I liked the reviews but I wasn't convinced that I would like the game alone from the information that was available.

While I have pledged for WL 2 mostly because I thought it's the last chance for a old school RPG, I haven't pledged for any other projects and I will probably only pledge again either when I have my Copy of WL 2 in Hands and feel like taking another risk or when a Kickstarter really seems to be the ultimate game that I crave.

Originally Posted by rune_74
I think it was poorly implemented really. I loved the realms games, but man I felt no excitement for this kickstarter at all. Some people put a project up there and think people will just throw money at it with little info. They were asking for a lot of money for a relatively unkown team(for recent stuff at least.)

As for kickstarter burnout? nah, I think it is more that it just wasn't a good pitch is all.

Agreed, I dont agree at all that there is not enough interest in this type of game. The pitch felt like "Well we are going to make an awesome game, we have mad games before give us money." IT got better with updates so I was keeping an eye on it. I hope they get more organized and try again although 1 million is alot to ask for.

I don't think the failure was due to it being a turn based game. As I see it the reasons for why the kickstarter didn't work are many fold.

1. Bad timing. Like people mentioned, the holidays are coming up, and some big kickstarters like star citizen were going at the time and wrapping up. Also there were a bunch of other RPG kickstarters in the same time frame.

2. The pitch was bad. Some people are enough to get a million bucks just at the mention of their name, but not a whole lot of people can still do that. You need a solid pitch, and then tons of hard work following up. Exact same thing happened with Shaker.

3. The names just aren't as big. They just didn't have built in fame to them, like say Chris Avelone. The Arkania games were great, but let's face facts, they were even more niche than most RPGs of that era, and just aren't well known as other RPGs.
I was hoping that there was enough appeal in Europe for it to make up for being not very well known in the States, but that didn't work out.

4. Next to Zero media coverage. Codex, RPG Watch, and Banshee just aren't good enough to get the word out. The Solenttar guys only asked for $4000 bucks, got mentions here, on the codex, and got tweets from Brian Fargo and Chris Avelone, and yet none of that was enough to generate enough interest. Outside of niche RPG sites, I didn't see Thorvalla get any coverage. Doesn't help most of the news sites are sick of covering kickstarters, and only mention the larger, well known ones.

5. Kickstarter Fatigue. No really it's a thing. Are games still funded, sure. But people are starting to get a lot more picky about what they fund. And they should. With the attempted scams, games like Star Command failing to finish and running more kickstarters, stuff like Haunts: The Manse Macabre falling apart despite being funded, and rumors publishers started to game the system, people have every right to be cynical and cautious about Kickstarters.

6. They really didn't have much so show. Some concept art, and a few models that initially could only be seen by people with the unity plug in. That's it.

7. They simply did not do a whole lot to promote the project. The days of posting your project, and waiting for the money to roll in are kind of over. You have to be really active in engaging the community. Look at how hard the Hero-U guys had to work to meet their goal.

8. A million bucks is a hard sell. I know multiple major RPG developers have said you simply can't make a good RPG for less than a million. The Larian guy has said even that's way too low. I understand that RPGs are huge undertaking compared to regular games. Most people don't know that though. Many people will balk at a project that big, if it doesn't show signs of reaching it's goal. Others may not think a game even needs that much. Whatever reason, again, it's a hard sell.

Originally Posted by Deekin Scalesinger
In my opinion, part of the failure has to do with the rather generic feel of the game.
Dragons again ? Isn't this what mainstream games are about (Skyrim, Dragon Age, Divinity 2, etc.) ? A hint of "nordic" is not enough. And I go to Kickstarter to fund games that are different.
I was expecting a more original game from someone who worked on Realms of Arkania and Planescape.

Realms of Arkania is based on TDE and that's the very definition of generic.

I think people delude themselves if they think a better pitch would have brought this decidedly old-school game to 1m. I think Guido is right about not giving it a second try. The audience isn't there. If you're into oldschool games I think you know that you have to follow dedicated sites like the Watch or Codex to be informed and I'm sure the people who like BaK, RoA or M&M knew about this pitch.

1 Mio$ / 15$ = 66667 -> a lot of people, but it should be possible to get this amount worldwide.

Major fault: This campaign didn't focus enough on Germany -> Henkel would have had a home game in his own country. (I could only pledge via PayPal for example).
He should have made a description of the game in german.

— For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. - HL Mencken

Originally Posted by Sacred_Path
Realms of Arkania is based on TDE and that's the very definition of generic.

Yes, but this was not my point. The main element of the game was dragons. Again.
I was not complaining about a generic setting, but about the overuse of dragons.
You can have a generic setting but an unusual story.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
1 Mio$ / 15$ = 66667 -> a lot of people, but it should be possible to get this amount worldwide.

Major fault: This campaign didn't focus enough on Germany -> Henkel would have had a home game in his own country. (I could only pledge via PayPal for example).
He should have made a description of the game in german.

Even PE only had 73k backers (I know it's only a numbers game but still). About Germany, well, I don't think a lot of people go 'hurrah' when they hear the name Guido Henkel, apart from those who are into the games he was involved with (which is, as I said, presumably a very small group). He didn't have a TDE license this time around either; that could really have helped with a German audience (though I'm glad they didn't go that route. PnP never translates very well into digital form).

Originally Posted by Deekin Scalesinger
Yes, but this was not my point. The main element of the game was dragons. Again.
I was not complaining about a generic setting, but about the overuse of dragons.
You can have a generic setting but an unusual story.

Yes dragons and vikings are clichés, agreed. But about the actual story we didn't even know enough for a prologue, so I'm not judging that.

We can't know if the potential for a million $ was there, but I am very, very sure that the potential was MUCH higher than what they managed to mobilize (1.3K backers, $47k funds raised after two weeks, that's abyssmal). We have seen a number of TB RPG pitches break a million (WL2, Shadowrun returns), and at least the latter doesn't have much of a CRPG pedigree. Even entirely new IPs have done very well (e.g. Dead State, Banner Saga) but not at the >1million level.
I think jwmeep's analysis is excellent - one may argue about the weight of each individual point, but I think it's an excellent summary of what's at play. Personally, I think the potential is still there, but you have to align all factors pretty well to break a million now. The biggest factor imho is the press - when WL2 did their pitch, and still when Shadworun and Banner Saga were on, KS was a novelty and these projects received massive press coverage. Now that the novelty has worn off, Press is faced with the reality that most of these KS projects are in the very early stages of production or pre-production and they need a hook to make it work as a news item - so all new KS projects will have to think very hard how they pitch themselves to the press, I'm afraid.
I still hope that over time the base of backers will slowly grow, allowing more, and more ambitous projects to be funded.